Built by immigrants: Foreign-born workers integral part of Detroit's history, economy

Workers outside an early Ford Motor Co. plant. In 1914, Henry Ford announced the $5 workday, which more than doubled daily wages.

Five key nations sending people to
Detroit

Whether pushed or pulled, immigrants
arrived from many countries. See
story

JoEllen Vinyard

2014 American Dreamers

In many ways, metro Detroit was built
by immigrants. They left their homelands to escape war and
persecution, to get an education or to seek more economic
opportunity.

The American Dreamers
profiled in this section have built professions and
businesses across industries as diverse as they are, from
restaurants to automotive, life sciences, venture capital and
social services.

But their stories
share a common theme: Hard work and persistence pay
off.

Detroit began as an 18th century French colonial trading post, and its subsequent economic history has been one built on a foundation of immigrant labor and entrepreneurship.

The economic impact of more than three centuries of the foreign-born living and working here can be found almost everywhere, from Henry Ford's blast furnaces to the delicate complexities of modern computer networks to the corner gas station.

Tidal waves of immigration not only fed industry but also fueled the rise of notable ethnic enclaves — and boutique industries serving them — such as the Arabs in Dearborn, Mexicans and Latinos in Detroit's Mexicantown, and the Poles in Hamtramck.

"Detroit is a city of migrants and immigrants. They're absolutely integral in the whole economy of the region, not only as workers but as consumers," said Eastern Michigan University Professor JoEllen Vinyard, who specializes in Detroit and Michigan social and immigration history. "They've been important in both ends of the economy."

Auto industry

Whether pushed out of their homeland by war, famine or persecution, the major lure of Detroit for immigrants always has been the automotive industry.

The 19th century saw waves of English and German immigrate to the city, working in myriad industries, from pharmaceuticals to copper ore to industrial machinery manufacturing.

Thomas Sugrue

Then came the cars, attracting immigrants from many other places.

Ford Motor Co.'s introduction of the $5 workday in 1914 fueled a major surge in Detroit immigration.

"Word of Ford's high wages — along with Ford's international recruiting efforts — turned the Motor City into one of the most racially and ethnically diverse places in America," wrote author Thomas Sugrue, a Detroit native and University of Pennsylvania history professor, in an essay for the nonprofit New York City-based The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.

"The auto magnate recruited skilled artisans from the shipyards of Scotland and England and blue-collar workers from the rural Midwest, as well as workers from Mexico and Lebanon, and African-Americans from the city's rapidly growing population of southern migrants."

Sugrue also noted that Ford's efforts to "Americanize" immigrant workers included a graduation ceremony where blue-collar workers walked into a "melting pot" wearing their national garb and came out dressed as "Americans."

Coming to Detroit

Detroit once was the third-largest U.S. settlement for immigrants, said Kurt Metzger, the retired founder of Data Driven Detroit who spent nearly 40 years compiling information and statistical analysis locally.

"In 1930, the foreign-born accounted for almost 30 percent of Detroit's population. The data show that more immigrants settled in Detroit between 1900 and 1920 than any other city but Chicago and New York," Metzger said via email.

"The makeup of Detroit — European (Poles, Germans, Ukrainians, etc.) was heavily influenced by the national quota system that either forbid certain groups (Asians, for instance) or maintained extremely small quotas."

The second, much broader and more diverse wave of immigration began around 1970 after Washington relaxed the quota system on a wide variety of groups, he said.

"We began to see large flows of Chaldeans from Iraq, Muslims from Lebanon and other areas of the Middle East, Asians from Taiwan, India, the Philippines, Albanians, Puerto Ricans and Mexicans," he said. "Since that time, we have added, through war and displacement, Hmong, Cambodian and Vietnamese, Chaldeans, Syrians, Yemeni, and many more.

"Groups like the Bangladeshi came here from other parts of the country (Queens, N.Y., in their case) because they were priced out by gentrification, and Detroit/ Hamtramck/southern Macomb was relatively inexpensive and 'welcoming.' "

Silvia Pedraza

Foreign-born workers and their families helped swell Detroit's population to nearly 2 million people at its 1950 peak. Today, the city has fewer than 800,000 residents, but the metro area is more than five million.

"People who came looking for a better future, they were pulled more by the economic opportunity in the United States rather than pushed by problems in the old country," said Silvia Pedraza, a professor of sociology and American culture at the University of Michigan. "They come to donate their own labor."

And that donation was in the form of raw physical labor doing construction, ditch digging — what some call "pick and shovel men."

Others worked in agriculture and the auto industry and everything that feeds it, said Pedraza, who emigrated from Cuba at age 12.

Other work

The waves of immigrants did more than just build cars and trucks.

"People draw on their culture, and they become a market for that culture. They provide things people in that culture need — books in that language, food, community organization," Pedraza said. "They recreate very quickly what home was like."

Immigrant groups form ethnic enclaves with businesses that cater to fellow immigrants from those nations or regions. And often, they look to capitalize on tourist interest, especially in the food industry.

"As they develop and get larger, they begin to market to a different clientele," she said.

"Immigrants always move through social networks, mostly the family or people close to them, almost as if they were kin," Pedraza said. "The first person will often be the more adventurous, younger, fit young men (or women, in case of Irish). They get a certain type of job."

Detroit was attractive not only because of economic opportunity but also a generally welcoming atmosphere — at least compared to other places.

"Detroit didn't have the anti-immigrant sentiments found in the Eastern United States. It wasn't started by the Puritans," said Vinyard.

It began as a French Catholic frontier settlement and saw its first large waves of immigrants in the 1830s — largely New Yorkers and New Englanders with reform and abolitionist sentiments, she said.

Spread out

The economic impact of immigrants is both concentrated and spread throughout the region.

Hamtramck is known for its Polish, and now, Arab residents. Dearborn is a longtime Arab enclave.

Curiously, immigrants sometimes live in one area but open businesses in another, said University of Detroit Mercy School of Law Professor David Koelsch, who also is director of the law school's Immigration Law Clinic and the Asylum Law Clinic.

One example is Madison Heights, home to many Korean, Vietnamese, Chinese and other Asian businesses. The Asian owners tend to live elsewhere.

"They live farther out, not in Madison Heights," he said.

One ethnic group living and opening businesses in the same place in recent years is the Iraqi community around 15 Mile and Ryan roads in Warren.

"They're starting to open businesses. It's starting to become a real community, like a little Iraqi community," Koelsch said.

The metro area is attractive in general to immigrants because it has cheap houses and good suburban school districts.

"Detroit's a blank slate. It's a pretty great time to be coming here as an immigrant," Koelsch said. "The value you get in the Detroit region is pretty amazing."